Jawai ROY, Sam vs Lampley

ROY, Nathan Jawai

It was no surprise to see Nathan Jawai sprint away with the Rookie of the Year Award. This year's field had depth we had not seen in quite some time, but Jawai was the "Man" amongst boys.

I will not jibber on about how great he was as we all know how dominate he could be at times, but I do have a side note on this award. Alex Loughton finished second in the voting. I have no problem with this, but when I possed the question, "Is Kirk Penney eligible?", I was always met with an emphatic NO!

The reasoning I was given is Penney had played professionally overseas before. Loughton himself spent a season in Spain playing professional, so what is the difference?

Once again we have a grey area in the system. If Loughton is not eligible for the award it just becomes even a bigger landslide to Jawai, but on the otherhand, if Penney is up for the award, it may just have been a close race for the ROY award.

Something else that has caught my eye over the last couple of days was the article Sam MacKinnon wrote.

He talks about his match up next season with Sean Lampley. This would be a good contest to see as it seems both guys like to flex their muscles a little. I say, lets get it on in the ring. Here is a chance for the NBL to get some exposure during the off season.

I can hear John Casey now, "In one corner we have former NBL MVP from the Brisbane Bullets and proudly sponsored by Crust Pizza, Sam "the Hulk" MacKinnon. And in the other corner hailing from Harvey, Illinois, Sean "Louie the Lip" Lampley.

I would pay-per-view that as long as the under card featured Paul Rees vs Brad Davidson, Ricky Grace vs Damon Lowry and Mark Worthington vs Shawn Redhage.

Back to MacKinnon's article and my point, he had no problem with Anstey's behaviour of flipping the "Bird" to the Brissy fans, while Lampley just had some friendly banter with some overzealous fans.

We must remember though, it was MacKinnon that brought the one finger solute to the crowd into vogue around NBL venues. I know Perth fans remember!

Just in case anyone is interested here is the boxscore from Game 2.